Interview:1996/08 Vintage Interview: Marilyn Manson from 1996

Vintage Interview: Marilyn Manson from 1996
Interview with Marilyn Manson
Date	August, 1996 published on March 23, 2016
Source	paulsemel.com
Interviewer	Paul Semel

In my career, I’ve interviewed a lot of interesting musicians and actors. But since many of the magazines and websites that originally published those stories aren’t around anymore, I’ve decided to pull some of the more interesting interviews out of my archive.

The following interview with Marilyn Manson took place in August of 1996 at a house he had rented in New Orleans while recording Antichrist Superstar. Parts of the interview were used in a piece about him I wrote for the music magazine huH.

Are you evil?

With anything that I do, I always try to create my own heaven and hell. To me, the definition of good and evil is relative to each person; good is really what you like and evil is what you don’t like. So to people out there who don’t like or misunderstand or are afraid of what I do, they’re going to consider me evil. But I don’t consider what I do to be evil, for my purposes. I don’t set out to do wrong, I set out to do what’s right for me.

I think in every person’s nature, good and evil is the balance that makes a person. It’s often that people are afraid to accept that and experience both sides. That’s when you really run into problems with society because it’s the self-denial and the hypocrisy that weakens everything. If people would just accept the Marilyn, accept the Manson, and see how the two things work together they’d just be happier. But when people hear “Marilyn Manson,” they don’t want to talk about Marilyn Monroe, they want to talk about Charles Manson. It’s always been a science project for me to see how people react, what motivates people, what their fears are, and that continues to inspire me to write.

Are you a bad person?

I believe that the people that I love and that I care for and consider friends I would do anything. Except, I don’t pass out good will openly to anybody, I don’t abide by the Christian value of “Love Thy Neighbor” because I think that waters down the value of love. If you love everybody, it really has no meaning. I find that the things that I care strongly about and would do anything for them, and likewise for the things I despise, I really don’t do anything against them.

As for if I’m a good person or a bad person, I think it’s going to be up to how an individual person views me, but I’m a good friend and I’m very loyal. I’m fair, I’m a very fair person.

Is man good or evil?

It’s always going to be a combination of the two. People have the potential to be good. But man as an animal is, by nature, evil because — if you want to subscribe to the Christian mythology of it all — it’s the whole Garden Of Eden, man chose the wrong path. It’s part of being imperfect, part of being flawed, and that’s what makes you a human being.

So yeah, you can say people are innately bad or innately good, but you can’t look at that as derogatory because that’s what makes you a human. As a person, you shouldn’t be ashamed of the way you feel, you should be able to accept things like hatred and greed and lust because they’re part of your personality.

Do these things come up in the new album?

Absolutely. One of the underlying themes is the struggle between trying to realize that, my own battle with the question, and the idea of…I got really fascinated by the story of Lucifer and the fallen angel and the idea of being kicked out of Heaven for rebelling against God. And I sort of considered the old saying, “History is written by the winners.” What makes Lucifer such a bad guy? Maybe its just that the people who wrote the story decided that he was going to be the bad guy. I can relate more to his characteristics than to that of the opposing team. That’s definitely something that was constantly considered throughout the making of the album, and even going back and listening to it now.

I don’t know anything about it myself, but a friend who’s familiar with it explained that Satanism isn’t worshiping the devil, worshiping the dark side, it’s more about individualism.

It’s a metaphor, really. I don’t want people to misconceive me as a spokesperson for the Church Of Satan. I consider it one of many qualifications, like being a Boy Scout or in 4H.

Were you a Boy Scout?

[sheepishly] Uh, I didn’t do very good at that. I didn’t get any of those badges.

The writings of Anton LaVey [The Satanic Bible and its companion The Satanic Rituals] led me to come out of my shell and inspired me in many ways. So it was flattery for him to ask, “Do you want to be a part of the organization?” But it’s not a title that I necessarily exercise. I appreciate it and respect it, but I’m my own person, and I don’t subscribe to any one ideal, which is why I don’t want to limit myself to just the Church Of Satan. That’s just a balance for where I find other inspiration, anything from Hebrew cabalism to Dr. Seuss. It’s all input for me.

I’ve heard all sorts of propaganda, and a lot of it interests me. I’m very into dreams, and deja vus, and aliens and angels being one and the same, and is…am I a man considering myself an angel, or an angel that’s fooled into thinking himself a man?

What were you like as a kid, say five or six?

I don’t remember exactly. I went to a private Christian school; everyone’s heard that story before. I was a scared kid a lot of times. I was always afraid to go to sleep without the lights on, so I developed a habit of sleeping with the TV on. And I still do. It’s not out of being afraid, it’s a habit.

Were you picked on?

I was always a little skinny kid that nobody really liked, so I was always just doing my own thing. I was really into fantasy and imagination. I remember when I was twelve, I started playing Dungeons & Dragons. Escapism was what it was about for me, because I didn’t really like and wasn’t the person that I wanted to be in the real world, so I was the person I wanted to be in my own head. I mean, it wasn’t miserable, but it was just weird.

Your given name is Brian Warner. Is there a difference between Brian and Marilyn?

Marilyn Manson, if at first was some sort of creation for me to escape what I didn’t want to be any more, it is something that has consumed me and I find no escape from. That’s not to say I don’t like that, but it’s something that…the idea of on-stage and off-stage, for me, Marilyn Manson itself has two sides to it. So for me, it’s always Marilyn Manson, but within in that are many personalities. Also, making this album, I went through a lot of transformations and this other personality of Antichrist Superstar has also even come into my life. It’s kind of this name I gave for less tolerant, nihilistic element of my personality.

I think it’s much more exciting and enjoyable to live your life as more than one thing. If you want to narrow it down and label it into little categories it becomes boring. If Marilyn Manson is a show, then everything in my life is a show because it’s all the time for me and that’s the way I like it.

So there’s no difference?

There’s a time and a place for everything, and that’s the different sides of Marilyn Manson itself. I guess you could say that what we is, what we are — excuse me — is for real, but what’s real? People ask me, “Is that your real hair color?” Everything is as real as you want it to be in my world. Something I believe is true may be considered a lie by someone else; that’s part of the excitement, the question of, “What is real?” It’s sincere, if you want to put it in those terms.

Six years ago, when Marilyn Manson came out, it was on several different levels. It was symbolic to kind of shed the skin of my past — people refer to your given name as your Christian name — so there’s symbolism there, and it was also the idea that show business is so fake that I wanted to pick a name that was as fake as it could be so it would realer than anything else because it acknowledges itself as being fake. Marilyn Monroe itself was a fake name, and Charles Manson was not his born name either, so I thought that was an exciting irony for me. And, of course, the other reasons for Marilyn Manson being the dichotomy, the extreme positive and negative.